Waubs Harbour Founder's Reserve (Batch 02)

Sydney Whisky Show May 20th 2023. Whisky #21 Nose: Fortified wine, red berries, dark cherry syrup, prunes preserved in alcohol, baking spices (cinnamon, nutmeg), port flavoured pipe tobacco, leather. A huge nose. Palate: The arrival is surprisingly unlike the nose to start with, initially flooding the palate with malt extract, peanut brittle and salted caramel. The fortified wine influence does not push forward until the later palate but when it does there is a deluge of Christmas cake and Christmas pudding flavours – cherries, preserved citrus peel, raisins, plums, dark malted cereal and dark chocolate. The texture is oily and excellent when neat but I preferred the palate with a little water. Finish: Medium/Long: Fruit cake, salted caramel and bitter coffee. Waubs Harbour distillery was founded at Bicheno on the east coast of Tasmania in 2018. Constructed on the site of a former oyster hatchery, some of the old hatchery buildings were renovated to become part of the distillery. It is built literally on the water line, like Bowmore on Islay, and like Bowmore it also matures its casks by the sea. The distillery is consciously striving for a maritime influence on their whisky and they are following Scottish production techniques that are suited to stable lower temperatures and high humidity. The distillery is also cultivating their own liquid yeast strains, which is a fantastic development for our locally industry. This whisky was matured exclusively in Australian ex-French oak tawny (i.e. port) casks and was bottled at a “reduced” cask strength of 62%abv. This is a core part of their range and is being released in batches of a few hundred bottles at a time. Even more so than their other expressions, batch variation should be expected. A very intense, commanding and rich whisky. I enjoyed it a lot, but it was a more demanding dram than the rest of the distillery’s line-up and in the end, as much as I admired it, I still preferred their “Original” expression. For a high-strength whisky this was not unapproachable or locked too tightly by the alcohol, but it just seemed friendlier and more interesting (and frankly better balanced) when reduced to below 50%. Interestingly the tannins did not seem as prominent as the “Port Storm” expression, which might be down to the cask selection, and I also noticed hardly any maritime influence on this expression. I think the intensity of the casks just washed out everything else, which is a problem I have with all big Australian "port-bomb" whiskies. Like everything else from the distillery, I thought that their prices are just a little too high, particularly for 500ml bottles, but that did not influence my rating. “Good” : 83/100 (3.5 stars)